Measuring patient temperature is a common first step in diagnosing illnesses. Physicians commonly use a variety of methods for determining patient temperature including, for example, obtaining temperature measurements with a thermometer. While thermometers utilizing mercury have been in existence for many years, modern thermometers typically employ one or more electronic sensors configured to measure patient temperature. Such sensors may take one or more measurements over a relatively short period of time. Based on these measurements, the thermometer may generate an estimated internal and/or core temperature of the patient. In generating this estimated core temperature, it is common practice to insert at least a portion of the thermometer into a cover prior to taking temperature measurements. The cover may overlay the electronic temperature sensor of the thermometer, and may protect the sensor from contamination during use.
Determining a patient's core temperature in this way may, however, produce inaccurate results. For example, due to the inherent variability in the processes used to manufacture such covers, each individual cover utilized with such thermometers often has a unique thickness, transmissivity, and/or other physical characteristics. Additionally, covers produced by different manufacturers may have different material compositions, dimensions, and/or other physical characteristics. Such variability can affect the temperature measurements taken by thermometers using such covers, and can be a significant source of error. In an effort to minimize the effect of such error, modern thermometers may utilize algorithms that make predetermined estimates of the variations in the physical properties of such covers. Such estimates, however, may introduce additional error into the patient temperature determination, thereby reducing the accuracy of such determinations.
The exemplary embodiments of the present disclosure are directed toward overcoming the deficiencies described above.